


To Die A Little

by AddioKira



Category: Better Call Saul (TV), Breaking Bad
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-08
Updated: 2017-01-08
Packaged: 2018-09-15 20:13:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9254696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AddioKira/pseuds/AddioKira
Summary: Post-BCS. Kim and Jimmy have an agreement that Jimmy never brings Saul Goodman home from the office. Things change after Jimmy meets Walter White.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gemini_melia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gemini_melia/gifts).



The first time he broke their agreement was the night he came to her place late, and he hadn’t changed.

Being late wasn’t too unusual. They both had busy, unpredictable schedules, and more often than not it was Kim, not Jimmy, who broke their dates because of a long night at the office, or an early court morning the next day. Jimmy never made a fuss, and Kim didn’t either, even when she suspected Jimmy was at a strip club, not the jingoistic monstrosity he called his office.

But the not changing, that was different. He usually changed out of those awful suits before coming over, into a polo and jeans like he used to wear, before he

_ broke _

went solo. Once he arrived in the most awful track suit, looking like a lounge singer on break from his gig - not in Reno, more like Provo. “There is no way I’m fucking you wearing  _ that _ ,” she’d said tartly, and although she had fucked him, she’d made him take the damn thing off and then swear on his knees never allow her to lay eyes on it again. It had been kind of fun.

But that first night he arrived over an hour late in one of those suits, a saggy gray pinstripe, slashes of orange on the tie, wide stripes on the shirt that made it look like it had been fashioned out of a bedsheet. Kim had pointedly changed into sweats and a tee shirt that was frayed at the hem, and stood in the door with one hand on her hip.

“Thought you’d forgotten about me.”

“Now you know I could never do that,” Jimmy said, and waited to be let in like a good boy.

Kim didn’t let him in, but grabbed hold of his tie. “Very colorful,” she said.

“Yeah, I, uh, came straight here,” said Jimmy, and that’s when Kim noticed he was sweating. Not just sweating, but his nose dripped.

“Are you okay?” she asked, gesturing vaguely at the silver line of snot trailing down his upper lip.

“Yeah! Fine, fine,” Jimmy said, grabbing at his pocket square to dab at his nose. “Long day. I came right over.”

“Are you getting sick?”

“Just some allergies - look, am I too late?”

Kim considered telling him yes, but not very seriously. She stepped aside and let him in, and that was when she noticed the dust on the knees of his suit trousers. It was ground in, making the otherwise shiny fabric matte. She thought about commenting, but decided against it. Instead, she locked the door behind him, and double bolted it.

Jimmy stood with his back to her in the doorway to her kitchenette, looking down as though realizing how he looked in the sudden light. He turned his head slightly without turning all the way toward her. “You drinking anything?”

“No. Had some work to do.”

“You want something?”

“Yeah, I’m about ready to quit.”

“Sit down, I’ll make it.”

Jimmy always had a thing about waiting on Kim in her own house, doing dishes, mixing drinks - hell, making her bed in the morning sometimes. She sat in the armchair that had its back to the kitchenette, and considered turning on the television. She didn’t, but instead listened to him bustle. The first thing he did, she noted, wasn’t reach for her glasses, but run the sink. And then there was a furious brushing sound, unmistakably his wiping down his suit with a damp dishcloth. She shuddered at the thought of what his dry cleaning bill was going to be. But at least he didn’t have to worry about throwing down that kind of cash anymore. And anyway, it was his money - she didn’t have to worry about it.

When Jimmy was finished in the kitchen, he brought the drinks out, the ice cubes rattling. When he handed her a glass, she noticed that his hands shook. And when he sank onto the sofa opposite her, he winced at the pop in his knees.

Kim tapped the rim of her glass with her teeth, then pulled it away. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

Jimmy jerked his eyes away from the television set, as though there had been something fascinating on it. “Yeah! Yeah, sure. Just, hard day of work, is all.”

Kim glanced down to the now water stained knees of Jimmy’s trousers. Jimmy caught her looking, and made a face, as though he was swallowing something bitter. “There was… this guy. Came in-”

“No,” Kim interrupted, and Jimmy shut his mouth with a snap. He looked back at the television screen, a black dead eye in the middle of the room. “You know I can’t hear about that.”

“Yeah.”

“I  _ can’t _ , Jimmy. You know why.”

“Yeah.”

The reasons she couldn’t hear why hung in the air between them - why she had to pack in her shingle after less than a month after she’d first given her notice to Howard. Why she had to go crawling back to work her way up from doc review  _ again _ , thanking the New Mexico Bar Association for not disbarring her with every swipe of her highlighter. Why she was stuck at Senior Counsel for six years without any indication that she’d ever make partner. Why she didn’t have  finding another firm that would hire her, not with her record. Why she was stuck in the same little apartment after working eight years as a lawyer, with nothing to show for it but getting to fuck Jimmy McGill - that is, whenever he had a moment to spare.

“Kim,” said Jimmy, and she was sure the silence got to be too much for him. Silence was always going to be too much for him. “I’m sorry.”

“I know,” she said, and thought  _ just what in the hell do I want this badly _ . For lack of anything better to do, she sipped her drink. “This is good,” she said, trying not to placate him.

“Thanks,” he said, and took the rest of his drink at a gulp.

  
  


The second time he broke their agreement, she was not as surprised. Honestly, she was more surprised that he called her than anything else. Jimmy had gotten extremely flaky over the past year. First broken appointments, calls in the early morning hours to explain he was sorry, he’d had to work - again - and he’d have to reschedule. It was getting to the point where Kim started to think that whatever it was they were doing was really going to peter out on its own. After that last two a.m. call, Jimmy apologizing, telling her he’d make it up to her, she sat up in bed, looking at the phone. She waited to feel something - relief? Regret? But she felt nothing. But it took her an hour to get back to sleep.

It was two months before he called again. She picked up her phone a few times, thinking she’d be the one to call him, but every single time, she put it down. She had a vague sense of disgust, and wasn’t sure whether it was directed at him, or toward herself. And she wasn’t sure whether putting the phone down made her feel better, or worse.

The day before he called, Howard came by her office, flashing the teeth he’d had veneered to the bright-white of Chiclets, asking her to come to his office. And when she’d trotted after him, heels clicking like the world’s best-trained puppy, she’d found Jose, Francis and Abigail - the three highest ranking partners at the firm after Howard - sitting and chatting on his modish sofas. They all turned and smiled when she came through the doorway, and Kim felt suddenly lightheaded, as though she’d untether from the floor if she flexed her legs in just the right way.

“Sit down,” said Howard, motioning to a free spot on a sofa next to Francis. Kim sat, marveling at her own ability to succumb to the forces of gravity when everything around her felt unmoored.

Howard began to talk then, and Kim wished that she could have remembered everything he’d said. Things about how she’d worked her way up from the mailroom, how she’d scrapped and slaved in doc review, the clients she’d helped, the cases she’d won. No mention of the clients she’d brought in, of course - that would cut too close to the bone. They hadn’t let her keep Mesa Verde, not after evidence of Jimmy’s malfeasance had been brought to light. Mesa had gone right back to Howard, and so had Kim, with a firewall between her and the bank, keeping her from accessing their files or discussing their case. Kim regretted not being able to speak to Paige again, but she thought she’d likely be reduced to trying to explain herself. How she hadn’t known, how it wasn’t her fault. She hated that part of her, the part that wanted to grovel and be patted, and reassured that everything was all right, and she hadn’t done anything wrong.

Howard kept talking, the words sliding past, slippery. She tried to catch at them, contain them, but they darted away like silvery little fish. It didn’t matter. The big one she was waiting for came slowly to the surface, and when it did, she caught it.

_ Partner _ .

She didn’t smile - it was good that she didn’t smile - but she felt her chest rise, and her shoulders peel back. Francis was the only one of them she could see out of the corner of one eye, and for a moment she loathed the condescending pride on his face, the acknowledgement that she was feeling what he had, years ago, when he’d caught the same fish.  _ Fucker _ , she thought, but stayed still.

She shook their hands. She smiled. She accepted their congratulations, and agreed to go to dinner with them to celebrate. And she told herself that this was what she’d wanted all along.

They had champagne with dinner, very good champagne, but Kim couldn’t bring herself to sip more than half a glass. When the waiter refilled it, she pushed it away, and pretended not to notice when Jose pretended to mistake her full glass for his empty one, despite the firm print of mauve lipstick on the rim. She felt a sudden loathing for them all then, and had to fight to keep her dinner from rising into her throat.

She was exhausted by the time she got home, but wired enough that she knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep. Worse, she’d done a deep clean of her apartment the weekend before, so there wasn’t any scrubbing or mopping she could to do disperse her excess energy. 

_ Well _ , she thought,  _ moving soon. I’ll have to get a service or something _ . And then, the reality of getting to pick out a house, her own house, overwhelmed her. She grabbed her laptop, went straight to a realty site, started browsing. This one had a pool. That one had a waterfall style shower.  One of them - palatial in size - even had a stable.  _ Horses _ .

All of them were far outside of her price range, she knew - even as an equity partner to one of the top law firms in Albuquerque, she wouldn’t allow herself to buy a palace. She was just one person, after all. It wasn’t like she had a family.

She snorted at herself on that thought. She didn’t  _ want _ a family. All she’d ever wanted was to work her way up, all the way to the top - and now she was there. Now she had everything.

_ This is what happens when you finally get away from Jimmy McGill _ , she thought, and that was when her phone buzzed.

She almost didn’t pick up. The number wasn’t familiar. It could be a scam, a wrong number. It was almost midnight; nobody called her this late unless she was at work.  _ Except _ -

She picked up. “Yeah?”

“Hey,” Jimmy said, and it was like a warm drizzle of honey opening up in Kim’s chest.

“Hey, stranger,” she replied, trying to keep her voice light and casual.

“Yeah, I know. Uh. How ya been?”

“Did you really call me at-” she checked her clock, craning her neck. “Eleven-sixteen p.m. just to ask me how I’ve been?”

Jimmy sighed at this. “Look, I know you’re mad-”

“I’m not mad,” Kim said, and only after saying it did she check herself and find that this was true. She wasn’t mad. “I’m just curious.”

“I wanted to see you,” Jimmy said. “You think you could come over?”

  
“Come over?” Kim asked, startled. He’d always come to her place. She didn’t even know where he lived, and honestly didn’t want to. She was certain that whatever place he had would be stamped with the mark of Saul Goodman. She didn’t want to see those suits hanging in a closet, as though a human being had actually been wearing them and put them away to wear again. She didn’t want to come across evidence of the kinds of people he would bring home after a hard day of doing plaintiff’s work for the scum of Bernalillo County. “Can’t you just come here?”

“I don’t think you want me to.”

“That’s a little cryptic.”

“Listen,” Jimmy said, and his voice sounded exasperated. “It’s a yes or a no. If it’s a no, I’ll hang up. What do you say?”

Kim’s breath caught in her throat, and she realized that yes, she wanted to go, yes, she wanted to see him, wanted to find out what was happening to him - even if meant another five years back in doc review. “Okay,” she said in a rush.

He gave her an address, and she drove, winding up in a leafy suburb with low-slung houses squatting amongst the carefully landscaped trees. She had a slight nagging feeling as she went from house to house, glancing at the numbers, trying to find the right one. It wasn’t until she saw it that she realized she’d been to this house before. There had been no lights in the windows then, and there were none now - it was the only house on the block without a bit of electricity shining from the windows or winking from the lights beside the front door.

She didn’t see Jimmy’s horrible Caddy with the ridiculous vanity plate parked in the driveway, so she took the spot herself, half convinced that she was in the wrong place. But no - she’d double checked the address. He was here, somewhere.

She knocked on the front door once, and he must have been waiting there for her, because he opened the door almost right away.

Kim recoiled. “Jesus Christ, Jimmy, what the hell happened?”

One long white bandage covered the bridge of his nose diagonally from his left eyebrow to his right cheek, and a smaller bandage on his forehead barely covered a gash. It was a nasty bit of work, and Kim fought the urge to reach over to lift the bandage and see if he’d had to get stitches.

“Fell down some stairs,” Jimmy said, with a small, humorless chuckle. “Isn’t that what they all say? No, doctor, my husband wouldn’t touch me. I fell down some stairs. C’mon in.”

Jimmy disappeared into the pitch of the hallway, and Kim followed. After she’d closed the door, she had to follow Jimmy’s shadow, hoping that she wouldn’t trip on anything and fall herself.

“I thought of, like six, seven really great explanations on the way to the ER,” Jimmy said over one shoulder. “But y’know, when I got in there, all I could think of when they asked me was, ‘I fell down some stairs.’ Never happens to me in court, anywhere, but this time I just choked. Probably just as well, sometimes it’s better not to say too much.”

They emerged into the living room, where a lantern - electric, not Coleman - glowed on a low coffee table. The light showed a sofa, covered in a sheet, and a chair similarly shrouded. No other furniture, save something huge in the far corner, that looked to be a grand piano with its lid down. Some boxes in the far corner. “Wow,” Kim said. “You’re not - living here, are you?”

“Oh - no,” Jimmy said, throwing himself onto the sofa with a grunt. “I mean, I own it - well, technically Ice Station Zebra Associates owns it, but hey, who’s counting.”

“You’re still using - never mind,” Kim said, with a shake of her head. She had to keep reminding herself that she didn’t want to know. That was the deal. He could do whatever he wanted, as long as he never told her what he did, and never involved her in any more of his - what, capers? Schemes? That’s what it had felt like when they’d just been scamming assholes out of expensive tequila. And that guy in the bar, who’d given them seed money for their fake business - they’d never cashed the check, so technically it hadn’t amounted to fraud. But when Jimmy struck out on his own as Saul Goodman, Kim had wondered just how far over the line he would go.

Outwardly, it hadn’t seemed so bad. Sure, he was maybe pushing the line on attorney advertising with those commercials. And maybe getting a bit over-ambitious in those class-action lawsuits he was peddling for “victims” of the Wayfarer 515 crash - he knew for a fact how hard it is to get emotional distress damages. But this was the first time Kim had considered - and really accepted - the fact that Jimmy McGill had really gone rogue.

She should leave. She knew that she should leave. She sat down on the sofa next to him. “So… you never got rid of the place,” she said, looking around her at the dark house.

“Nah. I had it fixed up, all the electric wiring redone. It’s in shape. But when the time came…” He shrugged. “I just didn’t really have the heart to get rid of it. The thought of some family moving in, turning the lights on? It didn’t feel right. I can’t even turn the lights on when I come here.”

“Do you come here a lot?”

“Nah. Just sometimes. When I want to think.”

“Jimmy, what happened to you?”

The same dry chuckle. “One of my clients decided that he was unsatisfied with the representation I was giving him,” he said. “He decided to express his dissatisfaction. On my face.”

“And you didn’t call the police.”

Jimmy laughed outright at this. “C’mon, Kim.”

“C’mon what - your client just beat the shit out of you. And you’re just going to let him get away with it?”

“That is just exactly what I’m going to do.”

“Why. Can you tell me that?”

“Honestly? No. Not unless you want me to break this - little arrangement we have going.”

_ Had _ , is the word that popped into Kim’s head as soon as he said this. Because what kind of arrangement was this, smashing together once every few weeks, barely able to talk about their day-to-day, not getting another call for months. She bit it back. “Then why’d you ask me to come here?”

“I missed you,” Jimmy said, and he didn’t try to weave a song and dance around it for once. “I missed - god, you know what I miss? The mail room. Remember the mail room?”

“Yeah, Jimmy, I remember the mail room.”

“Remember how it used to be then? Just… simple. Go to work, collect your paycheck, go home. Wake up and do it again. No ethics requirements. No bar association rules.”

“From what I remember that paycheck was pretty lousy.” 

“Yeah, but-” Jimmy grimaced, then winced at the pain. “I don’t know. But don’t you miss it sometimes? The mail room? Not all the time but - just sometimes.”

Taking orders from condescending associates five years younger than her, working time and a half through nights on cases where all she did was feed paper into the copy machine, collect the hot sheets that came out, smelling toxically of toner. The screaming when she didn’t notice when the ink began to run out, leaving a white stripe in the middle of a vitally important page. Staying up until 3 in the morning studying for the LSAT, one question at a time. Wanting more, wanting up, desperate nights when she thought she’d never get out of that glass cube.

“No.” 

Jimmy was quiet when she said it. “Not even when I was-”

“Jimmy,” Kim said, and now she was exasperated. “Have you considered - you know, going clean? I mean - legit? However you say it? Just leaving all that crap behind, starting over again, really trying, working your way up the honest way? You could do it. You’re a good lawyer when you’re not trying to scam everybody left right and center. If you just closed up shop, stopped trying to be Saul Goodman and went back to, y’know, Jimmy? That’s what -  _ who _ I miss. Can you just try?”

Jimmy stared into the dark over the lamp for a long time before he shook his head. “Even if I wanted to, they wouldn’t let me.”

“Jimmy,  _ who _ ?”

He met her eyes, his mouth clenched, almost as though he might cry if he opened it. “I want to tell you.”

She almost told him to do it, to just tell her, to pull her back into whatever twisted scheme he was running, to tell him that she’d help get the scumbag who wrecked his face in prison where he 

_ she? _

belonged. She wanted to tell him that everything was all right, that he hadn’t done anything wrong. That even if he had done wrong, she’d help him fix it.

But partner. She had her hand on the golden ring, and if she let go, who knows how far she’d fall this time.

So what came out of her mouth was, “I can’t do this any more.”

“I know,” Jimmy said, looking down at his knees. “I’m sorry.”

“If you change your mind, if you want to go straight - will you call me?”

“Yeah.”

“Well.” She stood, wiping her hands on her skirt for some reason she couldn’t exactly comprehend. “Do you want me to drive you somewhere? I didn’t see your car.”

“Someone’s picking me up in the morning.”

“If you say so. Well. Bye, Jimmy.”

“Yeah.”

She walked out of that dark house and drove home, and wondered whether she would miss him.

  
  


The third night he broke their agreement, Kim felt her heart leap in her chest at the sound of his voicemail. He hadn’t called her, just recorded the message and sent it, and she found it after she’d gotten out of her first partner’s meeting.

“Kim,” he said, and for one second she thought that this was it. He was going to follow her advice, stop this Saul bullshit, go back to working his way up honestly. She’d help - she didn’t know  _ how _ , but she’d help, and then maybe, once he got established again-

But the message only told her to meet him at a bar a few miles past downtown. She didn’t recognize the address. “I’ll be here for another hour,” he said in the message. “If you show - well. If not, I guess, good bye. Delete this after you get it, okay?”

Kim looked at the clock, and raced out the door, running to the parking lot elevator as fast as her heels would take her.

The bar was dim and sparsely populated, and she didn’t recognize Jimmy at first. But another look, and she found him slumping over a beer, a baseball cap partially obscuring his face, a dull windbreaker over whatever brightly colored dress shirt he must have been wearing underneath.

“Hey,” she said, trotting up, breathless.

“Didn’t think you’d show,” Jimmy said, with an attempt at a smile.

“Get you something?” the bartender grunted, and Kim nodded to Jimmy’s beer, just to get him away from them as fast as possible.

Once Kim got her beer, she turned to look at Jimmy. The cuts were healing now, but still visible. They were hard to look at, but his eyes were harder. 

“What’s this about?” Kim asked, and waited while Jimmy took a pull at his beer.

“I’m about to make a call,” he said. “I wanted to see you first.”

“You’re gonna have to explain that a little better.”

“Actually, no I’m not.”

“Could you please just not with the cryptic shit, Jimmy? What the hell is going on?”

“Kim, I’m leaving.”

“Leaving,” she repeated. “Well… maybe that’s not the worst idea I’ve ever heard. Going back to Chicago?”

“I don’t know.”

“Jimmy - that doesn’t make any sense. Where-”

“I said I don’t know. And I wouldn’t tell you if I did.”

“Jimmy  _ what _ -”

“I couldn’t hold it together,” he said around the rim of the bottle. “I tried. And y’know, it worked, for a while. But I couldn’t hold it together in the end.”

“Are you in some kind of trouble?”

“The worst kind. I gotta go.”

“You can’t just disappear, Jimmy, they’re going to find you out.”

“Well, we’ll just see about that.” 

“ _ Jimmy _ ,” Kim said, forcefully enough that Jimmy put down his beer and turned to look her full in the face. “This is insane. Don’t make things worse by running - turn yourself in. Is that what you need to do? Turn yourself in? To, like, the authorities?”

“I’m sure they’d love it if I did,” Jimmy said.

_ God _ , thought Kim,  _ but which ones - police? FBI? DEA? _

“Turn yourself in and get a lawyer. Hell, I’ll even represent you, if you want. You know how good I am, you know what I can do. Remember the Kettlemens? 

Jimmy started shaking his head, and she pressed harder. “If you’re worried that I’m too close to you - there’s so many people at HHM who’ll do it. I’ll even cover the cost.” She reached over, grabbed his hand where it was resting atop the bar. “You have a chance,” she said. “You can get through this. It’ll be all right. And when it’s over-”

Jimmy didn’t answer, but jerked his hand out from under hers. “I can’t,” he said.

“But-”

“Listen,” he said, holding his hand up, palm out. “I’ve tried to have this both ways for - what, five years now?” he said. “And all I’ve been saying to you is ‘sorry, sorry, sorry.’ Well maybe I have to stop saying sorry and actually do the thing that’s going to help you the most.”

“And what’s going to help me most?”

“You always said you never wanted Saul Goodman in your life,” Jimmy said. “Well, now you’re gonna get your wish. Cuz that’s the thing - we’re not two separate people. We never were.”

Kim felt her jaw tighten and her lip come up.  _ God damn it you will not cry _ , she told herself. “Please,” she said, when she thought she could speak without her voice wavering. “If that’s what it takes, then I’m asking you both to stay.”

He gave her a half smile then. “Thanks. But, no. And, y’know, once more for old time’s sake: I’m sorry.”

And she did cry then, not loud, but she felt the tear roll down her cheek. She swiped at it, then drank a quarter of her beer in two swallows.

“I gotta go,” Jimmy said. “I’m pushing it. You should leave first.”

“Yeah,” Kim said. “Yeah, okay.” She swiped at her other cheek, stood, and walked out without looking back.

After she’d finished her cry back in the HHM lot, she realized that she probably should have kissed him good bye. She picked up her phone, and deleted the voicemail, like he’d asked.

  
  


The first time Kim won a case as first chair, Howard took her out to a glistening bar to celebrate, and told her to order whatever she liked, on him. She ordered a shot of Zafiro Añejo, but it didn’t do any good. All it did was make her think of Jimmy, and she never saw him again.

**Author's Note:**

> The title and last line are lifted from the incomparable Raymond Chandler.
> 
> Merry Christmeth, gemini_melia!


End file.
